ANTHONY GREEN RA (lots 178-185)

Introduction
As the following eight lots attest, Anthony Green's work was obsessively autobiographical. His primary source of inspiration was his wife Mary, and his habitual references were family and significant events in his and Mary's lives. There is no other artist of equivalent standing that has documented their domestic outlook and everyday pursuits with such persistence, idiosyncracy and alcarity, with the possible exception of Stanley Spencer who was so inspired by his beloved Cookham. But Green's work is invariably more celebratory than Spencer's, more colourful, less guilt-ridden and austere, and with fewer overtly religious overtones. As well as a painter he referred to himself as a poet, and the strong sense of dramatic narrative that underlies his subject matter suggests the influence of the painter-poet Marc Chagall. Green, however was raised by his French mother, a staunch Catholic, and his English father, who was broadly Church of England. And it is the overriding message of joyful liberation - both social and sexual - with only the occasional nod to the spiritual - that triumphs in his paintings.

As well as his subject matter, the unconventional format of his work also sets him apart. As Martin Bailey notes of his paintings that appeared in so many different shapes and sizes, Green's rationale for his unorthodox approach was simple: 'Nearly all his work is based on images in his memory bank. These are not rectangular, like for instance, a television screen, but have irregular perimeters. Although a few American postwar painters were making shaped pictures in the 1960s, such as the Pop artist Tom Wesselmann and the abstract artist Frank Stella, Green's initial inspiration came from early religious sculptures which were often originally polychromed. He first saw these in cathedrals and churches in France, where they had been created to fit into architectural settings' (Martin Bailey, Anthony Green: Painting Life, (RA exhib. cat.), London 2017, p. 26).

Green grew up in Gospel Oak, north London, where he attended Catholic primary schools before moving to nearby Highgate School in 1951. After his parents' acrimonious separation the following year he became a boarder at Highgate where he excelled in French and Art. Kyffin Williams (1918-2006) was his art master, and it was he who encouraged Green to apply to The Slade. In his first term at art school in the autumn of 1957 he met Mary Louise-Cozens, his wife to be. At the end of the course Green was awarded the Henry Tonks Prize for life drawing, and after graduating in 1960 he spent a year in France on a French government scholarship. With the death of his Father in February 1961 Green received an inheritance, and following Mary's graduation from the Slade that summer, the couple were married. To begin with Green taught at Highgate School, and was soon also teaching one day a week at The Slade. Mary suffered a still-birth in 1963, the trauma of which Green poignantly records in lot 178. But two years later Kate their eldest daughter was born, followed in 1970 by Lucy.

Green had his first solo exhibition at the Rowan Gallery in 1962 (which represented him for the next three decades), was elected a member of the London Group in 1964, and began exhibiting at the RA summer exhibition in 1966. The following year Green moved to the USA with Mary and their eldest daughter, staying for two years. Elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1971, he and Mary purchased a holiday cottage at Little Eversden in Cambridgeshire where they settled permanently in 1990. Green was elected a full Royal Academician in 1977, and narrowly missed becoming its president, losing to the sculptor Phillip King in 1999. A succession of exhibitions honorary appointments and accolades followed, culminating in 2017 with a full retrospective of his work at the Royal Academy: Anthony Green: Painting Life. Green ends his acknowledgements in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition: 'Without Mary, there would have been no paintings and no book.' (Bailey, p. 6). His wife, muse and model was to die three years later in 2020, just three years before Green himself.

ANTHONY GREEN RA (BRITISH 1939-2023)
THE ENVELOPE
signed, inscribed Veuve and with the artist's address lower right
oil on shaped board
198 x 122cm; 78 x 48in (irregular)

Provenance
with Nordness Gallery, New York
with Spanierman Gallery, New York

Literature
Martin Bailey, Anthony Green: Painting Life, (RA exhib. cat), London, 2017, p. 38, illustrated; p. 179, no. AG53, listed

Painted in 1964, the present work is an elegy to Green and Mary's 's first child who was still-born. Green noted in the caption to the illustration in the Royal Academy catalogue that 'French mourning stationery influenced this beach scene. A grief- stricken Mary mourns her stillborn child. the artist's presence is irrelevant, just a postage stamp.' (Bailey, p. 38). The couple's grief was assuaged by the subsequent birth of their two daughters, Katharine in 1964 and Lucy in 1970.